Dramatic Death Poses

To show that the dying vikings in their pose are nothing special here only a few of the innumerable dramatic-death-pose-paintings.

The first is by Benjamin West (1738–1820) an American, wo lived permanently in England from 1763.
The Death of Wolfe (1770) is neoclassical and was a forerunner in its time and maybe one of the first of this type.

The second by Bertalan Székely (1835-1910) an Hungarian painter.
Its called "The Death of Thököly" (1873) and is already pure Romanticism. Nevertheless the pose remains the same.


The last is by Uroš Predić (1857-1953) one of the most famous Serbian painters. The style may be subsumed under Realism, but this makes little difference.
The painting became famous in the recent wars in Yugoslavia.

No doubt that these paintings are great. But at last stuff like this was one of the causes for the decline of history painting. When people didn't believe any more in this exaggerated gestures they blamed the paintings to be untrue and constructed, what they always have been, but now it seemed to be fraud.